The Art of Holy Rest: Why Sabbath Matters for Our Exhausted Age
The ancient practice of obedient trust in a world addicted to productivity
What would you do for twenty-four hours if the only criteria were to pursue your deepest joy?
It was 11:47 PM. My laptop glowed in the darkness of our living room. I knew I should sleep—I’d been up since 5:30 AM, worked a full day of ministry with meetings, coaching leaders, sermon prep, made dinner, helped the kids with homework, answered emails while the kids and Teresa got ready for bed. But there were more messages in my inbox, and if I didn’t respond tonight, I felt like I would start tomorrow behind.
Truth is, I always felt behind tomorrow.
My chest tightened. When was the last time I took a full breath? When did I last sit without my phone in my hand, without the mental checklist scrolling, without the low-grade anxiety that I would forget something important?
I couldn’t remember.
It was not an exceptional night. It was every night in this season of life. I knew something needed to change, but I was not confident in the way to change it.
As I talk to friends and associates 10 years after that evening, I get the sense that this is the water we all swim in more often than not.
Welcome to the Exhaustion
The Age of Acceleration
We live in the age of acceleration. Our phones buzz with endless notifications. Our calendars overflow with color-coded obligations. We answer Slack messages at midnight and scroll through news while brushing our teeth. We’ve optimized everything—our workouts, our morning routines, our children’s schedules, even our rest. Seven-minute meditation apps promise to make us more focused, more productive, more successful.
Even our rest is productive.
The Totalizing Equation
The equation is simple and totalizing: your worth equals your output. You are what you achieve, what you earn, what you accomplish, what you post, how you perform. Standing still feels like falling behind. There’s always someone working harder, posting more, achieving better, rising up in the ranks.
The exhaustion isn’t a bug. It’s a feature of life.
The Truth Nobody Wants to Say
And here’s the truth nobody wants to say out loud: it’s killing us.
Not dramatically. Not all at once. But slowly, steadily, in ways we’ve normalized. Burnout rates are at historic highs. Anxiety and depression are epidemic. We’re more connected than ever and lonelier than we’ve been in recorded history. Our bodies are breaking down—insomnia, digestive issues, chronic pain. We’re snapping at the people we love. We can’t remember the last time we felt genuinely, unselfconsciously joyful.
We know something is deeply wrong.
We just don’t know how to stop.
The Ancient Rebellion
A Subversive Invitation
Into this frenetic existence, an ancient practice whispers a subversive invitation:
Stop.
Not optimize. Not improve. Not seven-minute-meditation your way to better focus.
Just stop.
This is Sabbath. And it’s far more dangerous than you think.
Not Self-Care—Obedience
Sabbath is not self-care. It’s not a spa day or a mental health break or time to “recharge your batteries” so you can be productive again on Monday.
Sabbath is an act of obedient faith.
It’s a weekly declaration against the world’s most seductive lie: that human worth comes from human productivity. It’s building what Abraham Heschel called “a palace in time”—carving out sacred space where different rules apply, where your worth isn’t being calculated, where you’re free to simply exist.
Pharaoh’s Anxiety System
Walter Brueggemann names it clearly: we live under Pharaoh’s anxiety system. Like the Israelites making bricks in Egypt, we’re enslaved to production quotas we can never quite meet. The tyranny is invisible but absolute. There’s always one more email, one more project, one more optimization, one more thing to improve about yourself.
Sabbath says: This is a lie. And I will not participate.
Here’s what we don’t want to admit: our refusal to rest isn’t just exhaustion—it’s sin. It’s the sin of self-sufficiency, of playing God, of trusting our own strength more than His provision. When we work seven days a week, we’re not just tired; we’re disobedient. We’re saying, “God, I don’t actually believe you when you say you’ll sustain me.” Sabbath is repentance—turning away from the idolatry of productivity and turning back toward trust.
An Act of Faith
When you Sabbath, you’re not just taking a break. You’re obeying God even when it feels impossible. You’re declaring that you are a human being created in God’s image, not human capital. That you have worth beyond your economic utility. That the world will continue spinning without your constant intervention because God is sovereign.
This is why Sabbath feels so threatening. Why it’s so hard. Why even reading about it might be making you anxious right now, thinking about everything you need to do. Acknowledging that your worth is not wrapped up in productivity, but in something greater than what you can achieve.
Your rest is obedience.
Are you ready to trust God this radically?
The Deeper Pattern
Woven Into Creation
Here’s what most people don’t know: Sabbath isn’t religious extra credit. It’s not God being demanding or adding one more thing to your to-do list.
Sabbath appears in the creation story itself—before sin, before the Fall, woven into the original fabric of reality (Genesis 2:1-3). God worked six days and then rested. Not because God was tired, but because the rhythm of work and rest is how reality is designed to function.
Think about that. Rest isn’t damage control. It’s not what you do after you’ve broken yourself through overwork. Rest is original design. It’s as fundamental to human flourishing as food, water, and air.
This isn’t optional. This isn’t “if it works for your personality” or “when your schedule allows.” God didn’t suggest Sabbath—He commanded it. Fourth commandment. Same list as “don’t murder.” Why? Because violating Sabbath violates creation order. It’s like trying to live without sleep, without food. You might survive for a while, but you’re working against how God designed reality to function. By not practicing sabbath you’re essentially sabotaging what God said was very good in His creation. You’re fighting against His divine wiring and design for your life.
The Fourth Commandment
When God gave the Israelites the Ten Commandments, Sabbath made the list. Fourth commandment (Exodus 20:8-11). Right there with “don’t murder” and “don’t commit adultery.” Why? Because the Israelites had just escaped Egypt, where their worth was measured entirely by their brick production. They’d internalized the slave logic: your value is your output.
God was saying: You are not slaves anymore. Your worth is not your work.
The commandment to Sabbath is actually a commandment to remember you’re free.
Sabbath isn’t just a nice idea—it’s covenant faithfulness. When God gave Israel the Ten Commandments, He wasn’t making suggestions. He was establishing the terms of healthy relationship with His people. Keeping Sabbath is keeping covenant. It’s saying, “I belong to the God who rested on the seventh day, who freed slaves from Egypt, who promises to provide.” Breaking Sabbath is covenant unfaithfulness—trusting ourselves more than we trust Him.
An Invitation to Joy
Later, the prophet Isaiah connects true Sabbath-keeping with justice and liberation—with healing the broken places in our communities and calling the vulnerable back home (Isaiah 58:13-14). He calls it a “delight,” not a duty. Not a restriction, but an invitation to joy.
Then Jesus shows up and blows apart every legalistic interpretation. When religious leaders criticize him for healing on the Sabbath, he says, “The Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27).
Translation: Sabbath exists for your flourishing, not to prove your righteousness. It’s permission to be human, not a test to pass.
Jesus’ Wild Invitation
And then Jesus makes this wild invitation in Matthew 11:28: “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”
Not “work harder.” Not “try these five optimization strategies.”
Come. Rest.
What Sabbath Actually Looks Like
Sabbath moves through four distinct rhythms. Not rules, but movements—like a dance you learn by practicing, not by reading the instruction manual.
CEASE
The Hardest Part
This is the hardest part. We’re terrified of ceasing because ceasing feels like falling.
Ceasing means stopping not just from paid work, but from the entire machinery of productivity. It means:
- Closing the laptop and not “quickly checking” email
- Turning off notifications (yes, all of them)
- Not scrolling through social media
- Not shopping (online or in person)
- Not cleaning or organizing or optimizing
- Not mentally planning next week
- Not fixing or improving or solving
Ruth Haley Barton writes that we must cease our attempts to “be in control and make things happen.”
The Defense of Speed
Dan Allender names our terror: “Speed is the ultimate defense, the antidote to stopping and really looking.” We’re afraid that if we truly stopped and saw what we’ve become, we might not survive the self-appraisal. So we accelerate. And the faster we go, the harder it becomes to stop.
An Act of Trust
This is terrifying because it exposes the lie we’ve believed: that the world needs our constant intervention. That if we stop, everything will fall apart.
Ceasing is an act of trust. It says: God’s got this. The universe doesn’t actually depend on me.
Giving Permission to Rest
Abraham Heschel had a brilliant insight: if you work with your hands all week, Sabbath with your mind—read, pray, contemplate. If you work with your mind all week, Sabbath with your hands—garden, cook, create art, play music, work with wood.
Give the overused parts of yourself permission to be quiet. Let the neglected parts come alive.
RECEIVE
More Than Inactivity
Real receiving is not mere inactivity. It’s not collapsing in front of Netflix because you’re too exhausted to do anything else (though sometimes that’s necessary).
Real receiving is accepting life as gift rather than achievement.
Laying Down the Scorecard
It’s laying down the mental scorecard you carry everywhere—the one that’s constantly adding up your worth through accomplishments, comparing you to others, reminding you where you’re falling short.
Tim Keller says Sabbath is “a declaration of freedom from the restless anxiety” of needing to earn your value. Receiving trusts that God’s economy operates on grace, not merit. That you are loved before you are useful. That your belovedness is inherent, not earned.
The Question That Changes Everything
What would it feel like to spend one day not trying to prove anything? Not trying to be better, more productive, more impressive? Not trying at all?
Just being?
Just receiving what is already yours?
REJOICE
Permission to Delight
Here’s where Sabbath stops sounding religious and starts sounding like permission.
Dan Allender asks the question that changes everything: “What would you do for twenty-four hours if the only criteria were to pursue your deepest joy?”
Not strategic joy. Not optimized joy. Just joy.
And then he gives us the only parameter: “Will this be merely a break or a joy? Will this lead my heart to wonder or routine? Will I be more grateful or just happy that I got something done?”
What Brings You Genuine Joy?
What delights you? Not joy that has to justify itself. Just… what brings you alive?
- Long meals with people you love, where nobody checks their phone
- Walking slowly with no destination
- Making love in the afternoon without rushing
- Reading novels that serve no professional purpose
- Playing music badly on your guitar
- Napping without guilt
- Watching clouds and trees dance in the wind
- Playing games—actual games, not optimization disguised as fun
- Creating something with your hands
- Laughing until you cry
- Lying in the grass
- Dancing in your kitchen
- Really tasting your food and savoring the moment
A Taste of Eternity
Heschel said Sabbath is “a taste of eternity, where soul and body feast together.”
I like that thought. This isn’t frivolous. This is essential. Rejoicing reconnects you with what it means to be human rather than human capital. It reminds you that you were made for joy, not just productivity. You’re a human being, not a human doing.
The world wants you to forget this. Your delight is dangerous to systems built on your exhaustion.
REMEMBER
Reorienting Toward God
Ultimately, Sabbath reorients you toward God.
Not in a “going through the motions” way. Not performing religiosity. But remembering whose you are. Resetting your fundamental posture from grasping to gratitude, from anxiety to trust, from self-sufficiency to dependence.
Practicing Resurrection
N.T. Wright says Christian Sabbath celebrates resurrection—new creation breaking into the old. It’s practicing for the world that’s coming, where all will be rest, all will be delight, and all will be worship.
Remember can look like:
- Gathering with dear friends
- Sitting in silence
- Singing until something breaks open in your chest
- Receiving communion
- Walking through nature with attention
- Praying the hours
- Simply saying “thank you” for what is
The Movement That Gives Perspective
It’s the movement that puts everything else in perspective. You cease, you receive, you rejoice—and then you remember this is all a gift. You didn’t earn this. You can’t optimize your way to grace.
You’re just… held. Held in the hands of the One who knit you together in your mother’s womb (Psalm 139:13), and died on Calvary to redeem your soul.
How to Live Into This (Without Becoming a Pharisee)
Jesus vs. the Rule-Keepers
The Gospels record Jesus spending a shocking amount of time fighting with religious leaders about Sabbath. They’d turned it into an exhausting test—632 rules about what you could and couldn’t do. They made it a burden instead of a gift.
So let’s be clear: the point is not perfection. The point is direction.
The question isn’t “What am I allowed to do?” but “What helps me cease striving, receive God’s goodness, rejoice in his gifts, and remember with gratitude?”
Here’s what that might look like:
Start Small (Seriously)
If a full day feels impossible, start with four hours. Or even two. The goal is to begin practicing the posture of trust, not to suddenly nail a perfect 24-hour Sabbath.
My story from our opening? I started with Friday mornings as a pastor who of course had to work on Sundays. No phone until noon. No work. No errands. Just coffee, a long run, reading for pleasure, and lunch with a friend.
It felt wildly indulgent at first. Then it felt like breathing for the first time in months.
When You Don’t Control Your Schedule: If you’re working multiple jobs, hourly shifts, or caring for someone around the clock, a full day may be impossible right now. God knows this. He sees you. The Sabbath commandment in Exodus specifically included servants and foreigners (Exodus 20:10)—God cares about those with the least power and fewest choices. Start with what you can control: one hour on your day off. Thirty minutes before bed with your phone off. A walk during lunch. God’s not measuring your Sabbath hours—He’s inviting you to taste His rest in whatever measure you can receive it. Even the smallest acts of ceasing, receiving, and rejoicing are acts of faith and they are good for your soul.
Create Protective Boundaries
Technology: Put your phone in a drawer. Actually. Maybe you need to delete work email from your phone entirely if possible. Use app timers. Tell people you’ll be unavailable, and put your phone on DO NOT DISTURB. The world will not end.
Work: No email. No Slack. No “I’ll just finish this one thing.” No thinking about Monday’s meeting. The work will be there tomorrow. It’s always there tomorrow.
Commerce: Avoid shopping when possible. Try not to make Sunday about running errands and restocking for the week. Sabbath isn’t a productivity day—it’s specifically not that.
Obligations: Say no to things that feel like “shoulds.” If it doesn’t bring ceasing, receiving, rejoicing, or remembering, it probably doesn’t belong in Sabbath.
Prepare the Way
One of the most powerful spiritual practices is preparing for Sabbath:
- Finish necessary tasks Friday or Saturday (or whatever the prior days are to your Sabbath)
- Plan simple meals or cook ahead (unless cooking will bring you joy and rest)
- Clean the kitchen so you’re not starting Sabbath with dishes
- Have what you need already available
The preparation itself becomes holy. You’re honoring the rest that’s coming. You’re taking your own flourishing seriously enough to plan for it. You start to breathe and behave differently in anticipation, preparation with the natural rhythm of entering in to it.
Fill It With Life
This isn’t about what you can’t do. It’s about what brings life. And Sabbath is meant to be practiced together—with family, friends, your church community, your neighbors. The most powerful Sabbaths happen when we cease, receive, rejoice, and remember as a community, not just as isolated islands.
Long, slow meals: Invite people to your table. No phones allowed. Actually taste your food. Talk about something other than logistics. Let kids linger. Let conversation wander. Some families make Friday night dinner sacred—candles, blessing, the whole week set down together.
Move your body joyfully: Walk without tracking steps. Swim. Dance. Play. Not exercise—play. Shoot hoops with your kids. Play golf after church. Gather friends for a hike with no destination as a goal.
Create without purpose: Draw, paint, play music, bake bread, garden. Not to get good at it. Not to post about it. Not to accomplish it. Just to make something with your hands.
Be with people you love: Actual presence. Eye contact. Laughter. No multitasking. Some small groups practice Sabbath together—sharing a meal, playing games, taking communion, just being.
Sleep: Nap without guilt. Go to bed early. Sleep in. After all, your body has been begging for this.
Read for pleasure: Novels. Poetry. Nothing self-improvement. Nothing for work. Or read aloud together—families reading chapters, couples sharing favorite passages.
Get outside: Feel sun on your face. Put your hands in dirt. Notice one beautiful thing. Bring your close ones with you.
Worship together: There’s something powerful about gathering with your people, singing together, remembering together that you’re not alone in this. Sunday worship can be Sabbath’s anchor, the communal center that shapes the rest of the day if it’s not work.
When It Goes Wrong
Some Sabbaths will be disrupted. Kids get sick. Emergencies happen. You have to leave early for a work trip. You’ll check your phone out of habit and fall down the rabbit hole once more.
Ah but grace, friends. Grace is always present.
God isn’t keeping score. The practice matters more than perfection. When you notice you’ve drifted, just come back. No shame. No “I’ve already ruined it so I might as well keep working.”
Just come back to rest.
Why This Matters More Than Ever
Let’s talk about what’s actually at stake.
We’re Breaking
The Body’s Rebellion
Burnout isn’t just a personal failing—it’s also the result of a culture that worships productivity. But here’s the hard truth: we’ve chosen to participate. We’ve bowed to this idol. Depression and anxiety are at epidemic levels. We’re not weak. We’re exhausted—and we’re disobedient.
Our bodies weren’t designed for perpetual motion. Chronic stress floods us with cortisol, suppresses our immune systems, disrupts our sleep, damages our hearts. Sabbath isn’t spiritual luxury—it’s survival. It’s returning to God’s design for our whole being.
We’re Fragmenting
The Attention Economy’s Conquest
Constant connectivity has left us perpetually distracted, never fully present anywhere. Our attention has been weaponized against us—hijacked by algorithms designed to keep us scrolling, clicking, consuming.
Sabbath reclaims your attention as your own. It creates space for deep presence—actually seeing the people in front of you. Actually inhabiting your own life instead of documenting it.
Studies show that regular rest improves cognitive function, creativity, emotional resilience, and decision-making. But honestly? That’s not even the point. The point is that you’re a human being, and human beings need presence, not just productivity.
We’re Isolated
The Loneliness Epidemic
We’re more “connected” than ever and lonelier than we’ve been in recorded history. We have thousands of followers and no one to call at 2 AM. We broadcast our lives but hide our struggles.
Sabbath creates space for actual community. For unhurried conversation. For being known. For showing up as you are, not as your curated self.
When you practice Sabbath with others—sharing meals, worshiping together, being present—you’re building something the world can’t commodify: genuine human connection. Some of the most powerful acts of resistance are communal: families protecting Friday nights together, small groups committing to a shared Sabbath rhythm, churches canceling programming to give people space to rest, neighborhoods organizing potlucks where phones stay in pockets.
We’re Spiritually Empty
Practical Atheism
Here’s what Tim Keller noticed: our culture of perpetual busyness is actually “practical atheism”—living as though everything depends on us. We say we trust God, but we act like the universe needs our constant intervention.
Sabbath is the weekly antidote—a dose for recentering us. It roots your identity in God’s love rather than your accomplishments. It’s practicing the truth that you are held, you are loved, you are enough—not because of what you do, but because of whose you are.
Every Sabbath is rehearsal for eternity. You’re practicing living in God’s time rather than the world’s time. Tasting the kingdom where worth is inherent and love is unearned. Eternity in the present.
We’re Destroying Everything
The Earth’s Exhaustion
The same restless exploitation that’s exhausting humans is devastating the earth. Wendell Berry saw the connection: we refuse to let ourselves rest, and we refuse to let the land rest. Industrial agriculture won’t let soil lie fallow. We won’t let ourselves lie fallow.
Both lead to depletion. Collapse. Death.
Sabbath says: “Creation itself needs rhythms of work and restoration. You’re part of creation. You need this too. It’s not weakness. It’s design.”
The Counter-Cultural Edge
Choosing God’s Way Over the World’s
In case it’s not obvious yet, Sabbath is genuinely radical. When you practice Sabbath, you’re choosing God’s way over the world’s way in multiple areas simultaneously:
Against consumerism: You’re saying your worth isn’t what you buy. You’re removing yourself from the consumption machine for an entire day.
Against careerism: You’re saying your worth isn’t what you achieve. You’re refusing to hustle, to optimize, to climb.
Against the attention economy: You’re reclaiming your time and attention from the platforms that monetize your distraction. You’re saying no to the feed, the scroll, the endless content.
Against exploitation: The Sabbath commandment specifically includes servants, foreigners, animals, and land. Everyone and everything gets rest. Nobody is excluded from God’s gift of rest. Even slaves in ancient Israel got Sabbath. Even oxen. How much more should we, who are free in Christ? Your flourishing can’t come at someone else’s expense.
For human dignity: Sabbath insists that rest isn’t optional, isn’t just for the wealthy or privileged. It’s God’s loving provision for all His image-bearers. It’s holy.
An Act of Obedient Faith
Brueggemann calls it what it is: “an act of resistance.”
When you rest, you’re declaring that you will not be defined by market forces, algorithmic feeds, or productivity metrics. You refuse to be reduced to your output. You insist on your full humanity as an image-bearer of God.
This is why Sabbath feels threatening to the world around us. Your rest exposes the lie.
So rest anyway. Not as rebellion. As obedience.
The Deepest Truth
The Terrifying Question
Here’s what it all comes down to:
Can you trust God enough to stop?
Not theoretically. Actually. Can you close the laptop, turn off the phone, and trust that the universe will continue without your constant intervention?
Can you believe that you’re loved before you’re useful? That your worth isn’t your work? That you don’t have to earn your place at the table?
What Sabbath Points To
This is what Sabbath asks. And it’s terrifying because we’ve built our entire sense of self on our productivity.
But here’s the gospel truth that Sabbath points to: Jesus already said “It is finished.” The work of earning God’s favor is complete. You’re invited into the rest of grace—ceasing your spiritual striving and trusting that you are loved, held, and sustained.
You don’t have to carry the world. Someone else already is.
Practicing Resurrection
When we Sabbath, we’re practicing resurrection. We’re living as though the kingdom has already come, as though the anxious striving is already over, as though we’re already free.
Because we are.
Join the Obedient
Your Invitation to Freedom
So here’s your invitation—not to one more obligation, but to freedom:
What if you stopped?
Not forever. Just for a day. Just for a few hours.
What if you laid down the burden of needing to prove yourself, optimize yourself, improve yourself?
What if you spent one day receiving life as gift instead of achievement?
What if you let yourself rejoice in something for no strategic reason?
What if you remembered whose you are?
This Week, Try This
Pick a time—even just three hours. Saturday morning. Sunday afternoon. Whatever works. Better yet, invite someone to join you—your family, a friend, your small group.
Turn off your phone. Really off, or at least in a drawer where you can’t see it.
Do one thing that brings you genuine delight. Not productive delight. Not optimized delight. Real delight. If you’re doing this with others, ask them: “What would bring you joy today?”
Be with one person you love without multitasking. Or gather your people—make it a meal, a walk, a game night where nobody checks their phone.
Take one slow breath and say thank you.
That’s Obedience
That’s it. That’s obedience.
You don’t have to overthink it. You don’t have to do it perfectly. You just have to begin.
The palace in time is waiting. God’s invitation stands.
Your worth is not your work.
Your value is not your productivity.
You are beloved.
You are held.
You can rest.
The world will keep spinning.
God’s got this.
Now breathe.
Bibliography
Allender, Dan B. Sabbath: The Ancient Practices. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2009.
Barton, Ruth Haley. Sacred Rhythms: Arranging Our Lives for Spiritual Transformation. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2006.
Berry, Wendell. The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays. Edited by Norman Wirzba. Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, 2002.
Brueggemann, Walter. Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2014.
Heschel, Abraham Joshua. The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1951.
Keller, Timothy. Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God. New York: Penguin Books, 2014.
Wright, N.T. Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church. New York: HarperOne, 2008.
